New York Councilwoman Shuts Down Reporter for Blaming a Rape Victim

Last week, New York City Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo appeared on CNN to discuss the gang rape of a woman by five teenage boys in Brooklyn. During the conversation, reporter Pamela Brown couldn’t resist questioning the victim’s behavior on the night of the heinous crime. Without missing a beat, Cumbo unleashed a beautiful and eloquent response on how the media’s knee-jerk reaction of questioning the victim’s behavior is a way of unfairly shifting blame from the attackers to the woman who was brutalized.

Pamela Brown: No doubt about that. But I have to ask you this, Councilwoman: law enforcement sources have told CNN that this alleged victim in this case was drunk, combative, and bit a police officer, and she initially refused treatment. What can you tell us about that?

Laurie Cumbo: That’s typical of just what I spoke about: that individuals often talk about the woman, they rarely talk about the individuals who actually committed the rape. Those are the individuals that need to be focused on right now … We shouldn’t talk about whether she was drunk, we shouldn’t talk about whether she was properly dressed, we shouldn’t talk about the time of evening that it happened. That is too typical of how we discuss rape in the city, the nation, and really the world. We need to focus in this situation on those five individuals that committed this heinous crime and what were the bad decisions that they made all throughout the day.